


No Show

by Torched22



Category: DCU, Smallville
Genre: M/M, President Lex Luthor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:34:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21678337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Torched22/pseuds/Torched22
Summary: Lex has a party. Clark doesn't show. Lex is not surprised.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	No Show

Lex’s eyes scanned the room time and time again. It got so bad that whoever had the misfortune of talking to him, only got about 15% of his attention. They were all bloodsuckers anyway - that’s how he justified not feeling bad. Still, the hollow feeling in his chest persisted. He could trace the edges of that hollowness, cut his fingers on its glaring sharpness. 

He was looking for Clark. 

Ashamed, he lowered his head and brought the champagne flute to his lips. The taste of alcohol already resided on his lips, but it wasn’t enough to drown him entirely. He wanted to drink to the point where he no longer searched for Kent’s familiar broad shoulders, the wild curl of his dark hair, the sharp emerald of his cutting gaze. 

Luthor shook hands with scores of people, carelessly losing track of their words and names. Still, they came to him, pulled into the gravity that surrounded him. Gravity created by the fathomless depths of his bottomless pockets and perpetuated by his newfound power. The women were draped in fine jewels and sweeping gowns. The men wore fitting suits and shark grins. He knew everybody, yet nobody. His staff had invited the majority of the people at the party, but Lex did a handful of invitations himself. 

He had invited Clark. 

He had invited Clark to the event before this one, three years ago. And to this event. Both times he had taunted Lex with, “I might come. You never know.” 

Why say something like that? Why keep alive that little flicker of…

“Lex?” 

Luthor turned and breathed a heavy sigh of displeasure. It was Wayne. 

“Am I not who you were hoping to see?” the fellow billionaire asked. His blue eyes sparkled beneath the crystal chandeliers. He smelled of custom cologne and his muscle bound body was clad in a Versace suit that cost as much as a car. He most certainly was not invited, and Lex marveled at how he managed to get in. Undoubtedly, it had something to do with his equally bottomless bank account.

“No. You’re not who I was hoping to see.” 

“Ah, that's a shame," Bruce stole a flute of champagne from a passing tray. "Kent’s not coming,” Bruce deadpanned. 

Lex’s deadly gaze rose, his heartbeat climbing in pace. How the hell had Bruce known who he was waiting for?

“What? You expected he would?” Bruce added with a chuckle. “He said that he hoped you would ‘finally move on and leave him alone.’ Doesn’t sound to me like he’s too fond of you. You’re not the stuff of legends, you’re the stuff of the past,” he took a long gulp of bubbling gold. 

Lex’s jaw was snapped shut so tight that he felt the bones groan in protest. 

Luthor’s eyes were daggers, his mouth a weapon deadlier than any in Bruce’s arsenal. He fully turned his body towards his once boarding school friend and took a deep breath in. He’d put on a lot of weight in prison and it wasn’t fat. For the first time in his life, Lex Luthor could stand toe-to-toe with Bruce, with Batman, and win. Lex was all deadly speed and coiled muscle now.

Despite Bruce’s bravado, the tiniest muscle in his face twitched. 

“I’m the president of the United-fucking-States,” he ground out. “Tread carefully.” 

Wayne huffed a laugh. “And that still wasn’t enough to impress him was it? Is that why you did it? To impress Clark? Well, it didn’t work. You are enemies. You’re nothing more than a nuisance to him. It never mattered how good you were, how brilliant, how many inventions you made or how many books you published. You’re no one.”

“I’m more than you’ll ever be,” he hissed. 

“Oh, I doubt that. I see him on a daily basis. I work with him.”

“Is that what the silent treatment is called now? Working? All you two do is fight. You started off tight, but you’ve drifted. Now you hang onto a tenuous connection - probably out of obligation more than anything else. You’re just as doomed as me,” Lex smiled. “One day, you’re gonna wake up and not have that golden boy’s smile light upon your face. One day, you’re going to be in the shadows with me - buried in the silence - drowned by the very darkness you profess to love.”

Bruce’s eyes shone murderously, but a twisted smile began forming on his face. He stepped closer to Luthor. A whole hoard of security formed a line of defense behind the newly elected president, but Lex held a hand up, waved them off. 

“At least I got to experience that light at all,” Bruce said, “and because of that - I’ll have more than you ever will." The words pierced like a gunshot and Lex began to bleed. "You can have the entire world and it’ll never be enough, will it? Not until you have him? And you never can. Never will.” 

That hole that lived in Lex pulsed painfully in his chest. He cleared his throat and attempted to breathe, but his brain had forgotten how. Bruce just took Lex's stunned silence as an invitation to continue. “He’ll never love you Luthor,” Bruce whispered into his ear. He took a step back with a shit eating grin. 

The world seemed to shift around Lex. Time ticked on. People swirled around him. The lights glittered, the fire flickered, the music drifted. He remembered to breathe again. He remembered that nothing could bring him down because he was already at the bottom - and that was a liberating thought.

“No, he won’t,” Lex said. Bruce's eyebrows knitted as he wondered what Lex was playing at. Luthor kept on, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I would die for him. That doesn’t change the fact that…” the words caught in his throat. Bruce was too close to right. Everything he had done was in an effort to be ‘good enough’ - but he never was. 

“What good would it do?” Clark had answered to Lex’s invitation. The words hit like a slap and continued to sting afterwards. Lex finished the sentence in his own head. ‘What good would it do to see you when all I do is hate you?’ ‘What good would it do to come, when I’ve spent forever trying to get away from you?’ ‘What good would it do to see you when you’re already a lost cause?’ The hole in his chest only grew. ‘…finally leave me alone…’ ‘finally.’ 

Lex swallowed, tasting the alcohol on his withering tongue and wishing there were more. 

Bruce wasn’t sure what to make of the sight before him. Lex was never silent, Lex was never selfless. He knew the real reason Clark wouldn’t come. Kent wouldn’t show because Luthor was a magnet. He was youth and beauty - wit and cunning - talent and tenderness. Most of all, he was unpredictable. He could very well flay Clark alive with a single, broken glance. 

Despite having everything, Lex was shattered, and nothing cuts deeper than something already broken. What if he were to hug Clark? Touch his shoulder? Smile in his general direction? What if his soul-on-display nature was enough to unlace Clark? Tear him asunder and drag him into the tormented existence that Lex already faced on a daily basis? 

Lex the stoic. Lex the powerful. To everyone else, he was someone to be feared. But to Clark, he bared his soul. Why? Whatever the reason...Clark closed the door. Too afraid to look, unwilling to lay his body down on the bed of Kryptonite that was Lex. It twisted. It hurt. And Clark hated that. Hated that Lex meant anything at all. Still, Lex had this ability to walk forward with empathy and feeling when Superman only saw it as weakness. Lex was weak. That's what he'd told himself and Bruce knew it.

Bruce kept tabs on Luthor when Clark had so utterly shut that door on him. He expected a tantrum or a move for world domination. What he saw instead was a man in his million dollar penthouse, quietly drinking himself to death. A man who ate too little and slept too much and grieved. Grieved at the prospect of never seeing Clark again. He'd never see the Clark he knew from a decade ago. Not the Clark from Smallville. The one who smiled and offered his presence in times of trouble. 

Lex was in trouble. He had trouble. He got in a car wreck - lost his hand. Had panic attacks just getting behind the wheel. Then he was told that because of his Kryptonite poisoning as a child that he'd never have kids. It was a devastating loss. And still, no one walked through that hospital door. No one called. No one cared. Clark didn’t care. All Lex wanted was for him to care. To matter. So he acted out and emailed too much and did very questionable things, sliding farther down the slippery slope of villainy and no one caught him on his way down. Least of all Clark. 

Alone. Surrounded by an ocean of people, the entire world’s eyes upon him, and he was still alone. 

“President Luthor,” one of his guards came up behind him. “We’re ten minutes late to start the dinner.” 

“Go ahead, start it,” he gestured vaguely. 

“I feel bad for you,” Clark’s letters flashed across his mind. ‘I pity you,’ is what they truly said. The black with which they were written seared straight into Lex’s flesh, sealed right to his bones, and he closed his eyes against them to pretend they weren’t tattooed across his chest like a poorly hung ornament, or a noose.

“Start without you?” the suit behind him said incredulously. 

“Yes,” Lex answered.

"Yes sir." The suit disappeared. 

“Not the best way to treat your guests at your inauguration. Shouldn’t you be present? Shouldn’t you be gloating? Or dropping nukes?” 

Lex just looked down upon Bruce with eyes that said, ‘you know nothing.’ His hand hurt. Or rather, his lack of a hand hurt. His good hand reached into his pant pocket and fiddled with a Vicodin and a Xanax. He remembered how the entire world melted away with a little white pill, and just knowing that nothingness existed, was enough to keep him sane for now. 

“I am pathetic,” he said suddenly. “I am. I wanted Clark here, more than anything, more than…more than I wanted the presidency.” 

Bruce’s eyes went wide.

“I know I’m nothing to him, and I don’t care. I would trade all of my dignity and grace for two minutes, for one handshake, for one… ‘I’m proud of you,’” he swallowed. “And I don’t get that. It’s bad enough that I don’t get him. But I don’t even get that - and it kills me.” His breath was caught in the knot that had formed in his throat. “You can think whatever you like about me, and so can he. He hurts me, and I hurt him, because it’s easier…”

“Easier than what?” 

“I never wanted the world. I don’t even want him. I just wanted to say goodbye.” 

“Easier than what?” Bruce pushed, stepping forward, but Lex was stepping backwards, floating away, disappearing into the crowd. He had brought something small and white from his pocket and popped it into his mouth, burying it under an ocean of champagne before plastering another fake smile upon his face. 

Bruce followed through the thickening crowd until he found himself in the grand dining room. A man was on stage. 

“Ah, there he is…the man of the hour,” the man’s eyes lit up. “Please give a warm round of applause to the 46th President of the United States of America, Alexander J. Luthor,” the man motioned towards Lex who walked to the stage as the dinner guests erupted in applause. 

Lex’s hands went to either side of the podium, gripping it for strength, as he looked out on the sea of faces. 

Outside, Clark…Superman… was hovering above the sidewalk on the outer gates of the White House. He wasn’t allowed to hover on the grounds or drop in unannounced. Still, even at a good distance, he had watched Lex’s and Bruce’s entire interaction. Super hearing and x-ray vision had it’s advantages. Sometimes. This wasn’t an advantage though. He wished he hadn’t seen or heard anything at all. 

Lex’s hand-signed invitation to his inauguration remained trapped between his heroic fingers. It burned to the touch, it scorched to look at, it skewered him. Not as much as what he’d just witnessed though. 

He could go in. He could turn tail and run as far away as he could, as fast as he could. He could fly away. He could zip to the fortress and bury himself in ice for a century. 

But he did none of those things. Instead, he remained frozen there as time dripped down the drain. The invitation slipped out of his fingers and he let it flutter to the earth and stay there.


End file.
